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LIAM BARTON ROGERS, LLD. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



I 



SOCIETY 6F THE ALUMNI OF THE UNIVERSITY 
OF VIRGINIA, 

ON COMMENCEMENT DA Y, 
June 27, 1883, 



BY 



WILLIAM CABELL RIVES. 



Publtsl)C& at tl)c Request of \\sz ^oriets of i\)t <aiuinm'. 



CAMBRIDGE: 

JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

Slnibcrsitg '^^rcss. 

1883. 



X^ 



"Vir bonus dicendi peritus." — Cato. 

" Tout homme qui veut rendre son existence utile k la soci^te, doit 
marcher constamment vers un meme but ; ce n'est que par une con- 
tinuite d'efforts diriges dans le meme sens qu'il peut atteindre k de 
veri tables succes, et acquerir quelques droits k I'estime de ses contem- 
porains et k la reconnaissance de ceux qui viendront apres lui." 

Lacroix. 



WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS, LLD. 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

SOCIETY OF THE ALUMNI OF THE UNIVERSITY 
OF VIRGINIA, 

ON COMMENCEMENT DA F, 
June 27, 1883, 

BY 

WILLIAM CABELL RIVES. 



^ublisbtti at tlje Request of tf}c Sorietg of ti}e Alumni. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

JOHN WILSON AND SON 

^anibersitg '^Iress. 

1883. 



PBICE LIBr.ARY 



T/7/ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

"'Hi 1 ',928 



DOCUMENTS DIVISION 



\V' 






\S 



ADDRESS. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : — 

I HAVE not felt at liberty to decline the invita- 
tion of your Executive Committee ; and I appear 
before you to-day to render such homage as I may 
to the memory of the good man, and the great 
teacher and organizer, whose death, on the thir- 
tieth day of May of the past year, deeply touched 
not only the heart of this University, but every 
heart that beats throughout our wide land, in 
sympathy with .the interests of' liearning and 
science. 

Apart from my individual desire to hang a 
wreath — unworthy though it be — over the tomb 
of my early instructor, I feel that there is a pecu- 
liar appropriateness in the commemoration of 
William Barton Rogers by the Alumni of the 
University of Virginia. Here he passed eighteen 
years of busy and fruitful life, — from the full 
dawn of his young manhood to the rich maturity 
of his middle-age, — enlightening the minds of 
the young men of Virginia and of the South by 



his knowledge, and directing their aims by the 
power of his unrivalled eloquence. Here, by 
munificent contribution to your School of Natu- 
ral Science, he gave substantial evidence of his 
ever cherished wish to promote the welfare of your 
University; and hither he came, in the evening of 
life, to bear witness — by his presence and his 
words of remembrance and cheer, at your Semi- 
centennial Celebration — to his unaltered and 
undying attachment to your Alma Mater. 

It is not merely in our relations to Professor 
Rogers as Alumni of this University that we owe 
him the tribute of our remembrance, and of our 
appreciation of his knowledge, his eloquence, his 
labors, his virtues. As Virginians we owe him 
tribute for his earlier services at William and 
Mary, — the venerable mother who long sent from 
her Halls a line of illustrious men, whose names 
are written in imperishable letters on the roll of 
the country's history. As Virginians we owe 
him tribute for his long-continued service, as 
Geologist of the State, — for his survey and 
reports, — work which is soon to meet with its 
appropriate reward, by the association of his 
name with the loftiest of our everlasting hills. 

In our wider relations as Americans, — as citi- 
zens of a Republic that now stretches from ocean 
to ocean, and from the thick-ribbed ice of Alaska 
to the orange-perfumed glades of Florida, — we are 



1 



I 



indebted to him for the lustre he has shed on 
American science, by original investigation, by 
written and oral exposition, by constructive 
energy and genius. We are indebted to him, 
as the President of the National Academy of 
Sciences, for the fulness and accuracy and variety 
of his knowledge, for the charm of his ever ready 
eloquence, and for the grace of his ever abounding 
courtesy and kindliness ; and we owe him tribute 
as — by a title " perpetual and indefeasible " — the 
father of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, — an institution which has taken her 
assured position as one of the foremost tech- 
nological schools of our own country, and as the 
co-equal of the most famous polytechnic schools 
of the Old World. 

In contemplating a life so long, so beneficent, 
so distinguished, as the life of Professor Rogers, 
the difficulty would seem to be not so much in 
finding topics of discourse as in compressing 
within the space of an hour what should be said, 
even to give an outline of his qualities and his 
career. A complete appreciation of his labors as 
teacher, as investigator, as expositor, as father of 
the Institute of Technology, must be left, with 
all the wealth of illustrative anecdote which his 
career affords, to the biographer ; and all that can 
be attempted on this occasion will be to consider 
the principal excellencies of Professor Rogers's 



8 



mind and character, and to interweave the con- 
sideration of these excellencies with a hasty and 
imperfect survey of the successive stages of his 
long and laborious life. 

There is no doubt that he was happily born, 
that he received various and kindly endowments 
from benignant Nature. Like Horace, — though, 
with a modesty which did not grace the Latin 
poet, he would never have said it of himself, — he 
was non sine Diis, animosus infans. He was 
endowed with a clear and penetrating intellect, 
with a ready and retentive memory, with a sound 
judgment, — that faculty of common-sense which 
has been said to be one of the most uncommon 
of faculties, — with an acute ear, an observant eye, 
a rich and soaring imagination, a nature of poetic 
susceptibility, an unselfish, loving, teachable dis- 
position. The only good gift which Nature 
seemed to have denied him was the gift of a ro- 
bust physical constitution ; but, in his striving for 
the mastery, he was " temperate in all things," 
and, by a wise, well-ordered life, by the strenuous 
use of all his faculties, with a vigilant care not to 
abuse them, he enabled his delicate frame — like 
the nicely adjusted instruments of weighing, 
measurement, and observation, which he learned 
to use with such consummate skill — to co- 
operate efficiently in doing much good work in 
the world. 



1 



He was born in Ninth Street, Philadelphia, on 
the seventh day of December, 1804. His father, 
Patrick Kerr Rogers, was a native of Newton- 
Stewart, in the North of Ireland, and a student 
of Trinity College, Dublin. His mother, Hannah 
Blythe, was a Scotch lady, who, at the time of 
her marriage, in 1801, was living with her aunt, 
Mrs. Ramsay, in Philadelphia. There must have 
been something peculiarly good on both sides in 
the strain from which he came, for it gave birth 
to four sons — James Blythe, William Barton, 
Henry Darwin, and Robert Empie — whose 
names can never be obliterated from the annals 
of American science. 

Professor Rogers was early launched, by his 
own irresistible tendencies and by paternal in- 
struction and example, on the career which he 
was destined to follow with such signal useful- 
ness and distinction. As a great poet has said 
that he " lisped in numbers for the numbers 
came," so there seemed to be something of spon- 
taneity in the consecration of Professor Rogers 
to the study and the teaching of science. He 
knew from his earliest years what his life's aim 
was, and wasted no time or energy by hesitation 
and uncertainty in making the selection. With 
such endowments as he possessed, and with such 
talents as he developed, he might have turned 
aside, with every hope of success, into the paths 



10 



of political ambition, and might well have hoped 
to secure some of the glittering prizes which are 
abundantly held out in our country to those who 
excel in the gift and the art of speech ; but 
throughout his long career, from the studies of 
childhood until the sudden closing of his life on 
the platform of Huntington Hall, he clung to 
science with unwavering singleness of purpose 
and undeviating constancy. With this early and 
persistent singleness of purpose, were naturally 
associated an untiring industry and an inexhausti- 
ble patience. Before Longfellow had formulated 
the precept in his immortal verse, Rogers had 
learned " to labor and to wait." Whatever his 
native endowment, he ever acted as if believing 
with Schiller, — the seemingly spontaneous gush 
of whose splendid lyric poetry appears to contra- 
dict the theory, — that industry and genius are 
convertible terms ; or, in the words of another 
great author, that " genius is but an infinite 
capacity for taking pains." 

In 1827, at the age of twenty-three, he deliv- 
ered a course of lectures on Natural Science 
before the Maryland Institute, in Baltimore. In 
1828, at the age of twenty-four, he succeeded his 
father as Professor of Mathematics and Natural 
Philosophy in the College of William and Mary; 
a chair which he continued to fill until 1835, 
when, at the age of thirty-one, he was called to 



II 



the Professorship of Natural Philosophy in this 
University. Here he remained until 1853, during 
a period of eighteen years, marked by indefatiga- 
ble activity on his part, as teacher, State Geolo- 
gist, contributor to the scientific journals of the 
country, and first chairman of the association 
which has since become the National Academy 
of Sciences. 

Time would fail me to give a detailed account 
of his labors in this University, and in the field 
of geology from 1835 to 1842, or to review his 
published researches as geologist, physicist, and 
chemist. Suffice it to say that the records of 
those labors are abundantly spread over the 
scientific annals of the country, and may easily 
be found by the interested inquirer ; sufiice it 
to say that they placed Professor Rogers in the 
front rank of men of science, not only in the 
estimation of America, but in the estimation of 
Europe, — and especially of Germany, where the 
name of the Gebrilder Rogers, who had been 
engaged in collaborative work, became widely and 
favorably known. 

But, distinguished as Professor Rogers was as an 
original investigator of many and of very various 
phenomena, — well known as he had become, 
through the widely published results of his re- 
searches, for his knowledge and his observations, 
— there was one of his characteristic excellences 



12 



which I shall be pardoned for selecting to com- 
ment on at some length, as it was the excellence 
which commanded the widest attention and 
excited the warmest admiration in this country, 
and the one which gives him the most lasting 
hold on the remembrance of all who had the 
happiness to know and to hear him. 

It has been said, in an often quoted line, that 
the poet is born and not made ; and one of the 
greatest orators that the world has known has 
declared, as an antithesis to this, that the orator 
is made and not born. It would be truer to 
aflfirm, of both poet and orator, that each is born 
and made. 

There is no doubt that Professor Rogers in- 
herited an aptitude for eloquence. He came of 
a race which, on many memorable occasions of 
the world's history, if it has not controlled the 
action of men, has deeply impressed their minds 
and stirred their hearts. A blood kindred to the 
blood of Grattan and Curran and Emmet and 
Shell flowed in his veins. His physical qualifica- 
tions for effective speech were, like his intellec- 
tual and moral qualifications, noteworthy. He 
had a clear, musical, distinctly audible — though 
not powerful — voice. He had a slender, erect, 
lithe, active frame, and a natural sweep of easy 
and graceful gesture that propitiated the eye 
as much as his voice propitiated the ear. His 



13 



eye beamed with quick intelligence and genial 
kindliness. 

But these good gifts, these pleasing attributes, 
would not have commanded such success as he 
achieved, unless he had superadded to them the 
results of long-continued, painstaking, conscien- 
tious practice and labor. This painstaking 
thoroughness could be seen even in matters of 
seemingly insignificant detail. In such an act as 
describing a circumference, or in constructing a 
complex diagram, his performance was marked by 
a deft and nimble dexterity, with which he so 
suited " the action to the word " that in his pres- 
ence it was difficult even for the eye of habitually 
inattentive youth to stray, or its ear to be heed- 
less. As has been said of an eminent French 
lecturer of a past generation, he made himself 
heard by causing himself to be listened to. 

To the advantage of voice and eye and person 
and gesture, he added the advantage of a rich, 
copious, and accurate vocabulary. " To have 
good sense, — to know, — " says one of the great 
poets of antiquity, " is the beginning and the 
source of good writing ; " and what he says of 
good writing is equally true of good speaking. 
The knowledge of his subject, on the part of 
Professor Rogers, was wide and thorough. He 
owed much to his scientific — especially to his 
mathematical — training. That invaluable dis- 



14 

cipline enabled him to follow steadily, swiftly, 
surely the thread of his discourse, without danger 
of breaking its continuity or of deviating from the 
straight path which was swept by his mind's eye. 

The fervid glow of his imagination, the rich 
variety of his diction, the swift fluency of his 
delivery, led incompetent judges sometimes to 
impute to him the mere merit of the rhetorician ; 
while, in fact, he was exemplifying that " true 
eloquence " which one of the greatest masters of 
eloquence in our tongue has found to be " none 
but the serious and hearty love of truth : and 
that whose mind soever is fully possessed with 
a fervent desire to know good things, and with 
the dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of 
them into others, — when such a man would 
speak, his words, like so many nimble and airy 
servitors, trip about him at command, and in well- 
ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into 
their own places/' 

To a critic who should be disposed to see in 
Professor Rogers nothing but the rhetorician, I 
would recommend the mastery of his treatise on 
" The Strength of Materials," or of his " Ele- 
ments of Mechanical Philosophy," which an emi- 
nently competent authority has declared to be 
far superior to any other work on the subject he 
had ever seen, " in the lucid explanations which 
are given, and the distinctness with which the 



15 

leading principles of the science are enunciated." 
To such a critic I would quote the testimony of 
Professor Francis H. Smith, who, in an admirable 
letter, recalls "the enthusiasm with which Pro- 
fessor Courtenay — himself one of the most 
thorough teachers of the day — spoke of Pro- 
fessor Rogers's treatment of the doctrine of cen- 
tral forces as a masterpiece of simple yet adequate 
exposition." I would point also to " the glowing 
tribute " by Professor Bache — referred to in the 
same letter — to a lecture of Professor Rogers, as 
" the most perfect specimen of scientific analysis 
he had ever listened to." 

The oratory of Professor Rogers was ever, as 
I have said, the outcome of wide, thorough, 
exact scientific knowledge ; but there is no ques- 
tion that his reason and his knowledge were often 
informed with the glow of poetry and passion, 
and that to this glow his marvellous success as a 
speaker owed a legitimate share of its triumph. 
One of these triumphs was so marked and pecu- 
liar in itself, as well as in its attending circum- 
stances, that, at the risk of a slight digression, I 
cannot forbear making reference to it. I am 
informed by Professor Mallet, — who, to the irrep- 
arable loss of this University and this Common- 
wealth, is about to transfer his invaluable services 
to a distant field of usefulness and distinction, 
— that he was present, when a youth, at a public 



i6 



dinner given in England, in the year 1849, by 
the Mayor and Corporation of Birmingham, to 
the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, at which Faraday, Lord Rosse, Sir 
Roderick Murchison, Professor Edward Forbes, 
Von Schrotter of Vienna, Drouyn de I'Huys, the 
French Ambassador, the Rev. Dr. Romney Rob- 
inson, President of the Association for the year, 
and other prominent men, were guests. 

Professor Rogers was called upon to speak ; 
and I cannot better state than in Professor Mal- 
let's own words the impression he made on what 
may fairly be considered to be the incarnation of 
sober sense and of accurate critical judgment, — 
a British scientific assembl}^ " Although I was 
but a boy at the time," says Professor Mallet, 
" attending the meeting with my father, I recol- 
lect most distinctly the marked impression made 
upon the large assembly by Professor Rogers's 
speech, and the enthusiasm it kindled. It came 
late in the evening, after much — perhaps most — 
of the matter appropriate to the occasion had 
been already utilized by others ; yet it was clearly 
the success of the banquet. Americans were less 
known in England than they have since become, 
and the slight foreign flavor which accompanied 
a speech excellent in itself, and fluently delivered 
in the mother tongue, added to the piquancy and 
effect." 



17 

Professor Rogers, in his style as a speaker, 
seemed ever to bear in mind and heart 'the sound 
architectural canon of the permissibility of orna- 
mented construction, but not of constructed orna- 
mentation. I find the theory on which he based 
his method of speech excellently outlined by 
himself in a few passages in which he eloquently 
pleads in behalf of " the ennobling influences 
which attend the contemplation of all great 
works of art." " Most of what is true and beau- 
tiful," he affirms, " in painting, sculpture, or 
architecture, is but the material expression of 
truth previously latent in the soul, and must, 
therefore, awaken in the observer sentiments akin 
to those from which the artist drew his inspira- 
tion." He contends that " the cultivation of the 
fine arts must be regarded as a necessary supple- 
ment in every wise system of education to the 
teachings of practical science and the more 
purely logical exercises of thought ; " and he 
proceeds to say, with his characteristic felicity of 
illustration, that, " if they may be represented by 
the wreath of stone that crowns the Corinthian 
shaft with leafy beauty, while adding nothing to 
its supporting power, they are still more truly 
symbolized by the towering arches and swelling 
domes, whose very grace and grandeur are condi- 
tions inseparable from their strength." 

Entertaining these views, it was impossible for 

3 




i8 



Professor Rogers, with such powers of under- 
standing and imagination as he possessed, not to 
adorn whatever he touched. It is not strange if, 
in speaking of the heavenly bodies, while abating 
nothing from the rigor of mathematical demon- 
stration, that their splendor was sometimes re- 
flected in ^is discourse, and if the mystic music 
of the spheres was sometimes made to echo in 
the ears of his hearers as it echoed in his own 
soul. It is no wonder if, in lecturing on the 
geography and geology of your Western Moun- 
tains, his language often unconsciously borrowed 
something from the scenes on which he had 
lately gazed with delight. It is no wonder if, 
in speaking of the natural features of Virginia, 
his enthusiasm and poetic rapture were enkindled 
by the remembered impression of the azure out- 
line which bounds your lovely landscape. His 
style was vital with the breezes of the crest of the 
Blue Ridge and of the Alleghanies ; it was clear 
with the purity and swift with the rush of the 
mountain stream ; it was rich with the teeming 
fertility of the fruitful valley ; and it sometimes 
blazed with the autumnal glories of the maple 
and the Virginia-creeper. 

In the year 1853 Professor Rogers was forty- 
nine years of age. He was then fully developed, 
— equipped with wide, various, and thorough 
scientific knowledge, with unequalled power as 



19 

an oral expositor of science, with a great reputa- 
tion in his own country, and an extending repu- 
tation in Europe. If, at this time, Virginia owed 
much to him, he, in return, owed much to Vir- 
ginia. It has been said, with more wit than 
truth, that Virginia is a good State to be born in, 
provided one leaves it early enough. Professor 
Rogers's career illustrates the converse of this 
clever aphorism. He was not indeed born in 
Virginia, but he came to Virginia so early and 
stayed so long as to be thoroughly imbued with 
her influences. He caught something of the 
creative energy of Thomas Jefferson, by an early 
contact with that all-embracing and untiring 
philosopher and constructor, one of whose high- 
est claims to the gratitude of posterity — out- 
ranking, in his own estimation, many of his other 
eminent public services — will ever be that he was 
Father of the University of Virginia. He had 
enjoyed also the opportunity of listening to the 
experienced wisdom and the delightful conversa- 
tional humor of James Madison, once the Rector 
of. the University. For seven years he had 
taught the youth of William and Mary, and for 
eighteen years the youth of this University; and 
during this quarter of a century he had largely 
expanded his own powers by the ever congenial 
occupation — as he told us eight years ago from 
this very platform — of educating the young men 



20 



of Virginia and of the South. He owed much 
of the growth of his faculties to his long and 
intimate intercourse, while here, with such col- 
leagues as Emmet and Bonnycastle and Davis, 
the two Tuckers and Harrison and Courtenay 
and Cabell ; and he drew not a little of the charm 
of his easy and cordial and unaffected manners 
from his familiarity with all classes of the warm- 
hearted people of Virginia. In a word, he was 
largely a Virginian product ; and, like some other 
of the productions of Virginia, one of those 
products of which the mother had no need to be 
ashamed. 

But the time had now come when the sphere 
of his usefulness was to be widely changed. On 
the twentieth day of June, 1849, he had married 
Miss Emma Savage, of Boston, — daughter of 
the author of the New England Genealogical 
Dictionary and President of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society. This connection proved to 
be the crowning blessing of his life. Mrs. 
Rogers, by her energy, her intelligence, her cheer- 
ful equanimity, her unfailing sympathy, became 
to him what Lady Lyell had been to Sir Charles 
Lyell, — another eminent man, engaged in kin- 
dred pursuits, — the promoter of his labors, the 
ornament and solace of his middle life, and the 
devoted companion and supporter of his declining 
years. One of the results, however, of the mar- 



tfH 



21 



riage was that it led, in 1853, to the transfer of 
Professor Rogers's residence to Boston, — that 
fairest of American cities, which sends the influ- 
ence of her high civiUzation throughout the 
land. 

Professor Rogers was at once warmly welcomed 
in the best circles of a city which does not lightly 
accord its favors and its confidence. He owed 
this less even to his connection, excellent as 
that was, than to his own sterling merit. He 
was a man who, in any cultured community, 
could not fail at once to attract and retain regard. 
His knowledge, his power of communicating his 
knowledge, his amiable disposition, his manners, 
made him a great social favorite in Boston, and 
he became one of the earliest and most appre- 
ciated members of a select club, known as the 
Friday Club. Among the members of that 
club, besides himself, were such men as the thor- 
oughly informed and sparkling Amory, the cul- 
tured Hillard, the learned Ticknor, the scholarly 
Felton, the logical and profound Curtis, the 
genial, enthusiastic, world-renowned Agassiz. 

He enlarged his experience, also, by visiting 
Europe on five different occasions. Sailing, for 
the first time, on the day of his marriage, the 
twentieth of June, 1849, he returned in October 
of the same year. His travels with Mrs. Rogers 
were limited, at that time, to England and Scot- 



22 



land, with a short stay in Paris, and a few weeks 
in Switzerland. There were but few travellers 
from England or America during that season, 
as they were deterred by the disturbed state of 
Germany after the Revolution of 1848, and there 
were then no railways in Switzerland. The 
pleasure to Professor Rogers, — freed from the 
restraint of exacting duties, — of going quietly 
and slowly whithersoever inclination led, was very 
great. In England he had delightful intercourse 
with scientific men, most of whom he had pre- 
viously known only through their works. Lyell 
and Daubeny he had known in America, and 
the latter had been his guest at this University. 
During this visit he took part in the proceedings 
of the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science, attended the banquet to which I 
have already referred, and was welcomed and 
entertained with the greatest kindness and appre- 
ciation by such men as Lyell, Buckland, — then 
Dean of Westminster, — Sedgwick, Mantell, 
Gasiot, Wheatland, and Brewster. 

In 1857 he attended the meeting of the Asso- 
ciation, at Dublin; and in 1864, accompanied by 
Mrs. Rogers, he went to Europe in order to col- 
lect apparatus for the Physical Laboratory, and 
models of machinery, for the Institute of Tech- 
nology. He profited by this visit to carefully 
study the schools for industrial arts at Paris 



23 

and Carlsruhe, and to attend the meeting of 
the British Association at Bath. In 1866 he 
made a voyage on account of the ilhiess of his 
distinguished brother, Henry Darwin Rogers, 
who had been his early colaborer in important 
scientific work, and who then occupied the chair 
of Natural Science in the University of Glas- 
gow. He did not, however, reach Scotland 
until after his brother's death, and he returned 
in a few weeks. 

His last voyage to Europe was at the time of 
the Paris Exhibition of 1867, when he represented 
the State of Massachusetts as Commissioner, and 
passed the summer in almost daily visits to the 
Exhibition. 

We can easily fancy, with his knowledge and 
his tastes, what high satisfaction he must have felt 
in the society of eminent men of science abroad, 
and with what keen appreciation he must have 
examined the schools, the museums, the art-gal- 
leries, the exhibitions of Europe, — with what 
interest and delight he must have looked on the 
sublime natural features of Switzerland. If he had 
been an ordinary man, the temptation might have 
proved irresistible to linger long and idly, instead 
of studying the Old World, — "rich with the spoils 
of time," — for the benefit of his own country. 
He might well, except for his high purposes, have 
passed away the years as others often do — loiter- 



24 

ing in the Garden of the Tuileries or in the 
Champs Elysees, or basking in the sunshine of 
the Riviera; or even at home, he might have 
become an intellectual sybarite — spending his 
time in the alcoves of the Athenaeum and in such 
society as I have mentioned. But the seductive 
charms of Europe and the delights of congenial 
society at home were alike powerless to render 
his life unfruitful. With him work, unceasing 
work, and work to a definite, useful, practical end, 
was an imperious necessity of his intellectual and 
moral being. He preferred 

"To scorn delights and live laborious days." 

He withdrew from the Friday Club, not be- 
cause intercourse with its members was not 
a source of the highest enjoyment to him, but 
because he was unwilling to spare the time 
from teaching, and from the work of founding 
and developing the Institute of Technology, on 
which he was now beginning to concentrate his 
faculties. 

It is impossible on this occasion to review the 
purely scientific labors of Professor Rogers after 
his removal to Boston, and it is unnecessary to 
attempt a task which has already been excellently 
well performed by Professor Cross, in an address 
to the Society of Arts, of the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology. Nor will I pause to 



25 

take adequate notice of Professor Rogers's Presi- 
dency of the National Academy of Sciences, — his 
fit and crowning distinction as the Nestor of 
American science, — or to dwell on the graces of 
his private life, whether in the exercise of his cor- 
dial and unostentatious hospitality at his home in 
Marlborough Street, or in his embowered cottage 
by the sea, at Newport, Rhode Island, where a 
now silent poet^ has beautifully and touchingly 
commemorated his genius and his virtues. 

I pass on to the great work of the end of his 
life, the foundation and development of the In- 
stitute of Technology. 

This topic has been treated by his colaborer 
and associate with exhaustive knowledge and 
sympathetic appreciation. The six documents 
referred to by Professor Runkle in his address to 
the Society of Arts, as well as the catalogue 
of the Institute of Technology, — now in the 
eighteenth year of its existence, — bear abundant 
witness to the wide and far-reaching views of 
Professor Rogers in founding an institution which 
should provide for the youth of the country " an 
education based on the modern languages, with 
the mathematical, physical, and natural sciences in 
their relation to the industrial wants and progress 
of the country." A careful perusal of these docu- 

1 See a note at the end of this Address for an explanation of 
this allusion. 



26 

ments, in their relation to the scheme of instruc- 
tion and the provisions for discipline, will show 
the large influence which the methods of this 
University exercised on the mind of Professor 
Rogers in his formative plans for the newer 
Institution. 

In the scope and plan of the Institute of Tech- 
nology, we shall recognize the same master-hand 
which, in answer to a resolve of the Legislature 
of Virginia, of the twenty-second day of Decem- 
ber, 1844, drew the Report — instinct with wis- 
dom and with eloquence, and containing passages 
worthy of being emblazoned in letters of light on 
your walls — against the expediency of withdraw- 
ing the annuity from this University. We shall 
see the prevalence of the same method of influen- 
cing the conduct of the students which exists 
here, — a method reducing to a minimum the fet- 
ters of necessary restraint, — not based on the 
idea of original sin and inborn perverseness, but 
on the wisdom of encouraging to the utmost, 
wherever it exists, the desire to excel. We shall 
recognize the same great mind which eloquently 
pleads in the Report referred to for a liberal dis- 
cretion in " the Election of Studies," and for " In- 
struction by Lectures," instead of by the exclusive 
use of text-books, as more vitalizing to the faculties 
of both teacher and student. Finally, we shall feel 
the beating of the same large heart, with its aspi- 



27 

rations for giving the widest beneficence to the 
Institution, and making its influence and renown 
commensurate with the wants of the age, and the 
greatness and resources of the country. 

While the arduous, persevering, and finally 
successful labors of Professor Rogers in connec- 
tion with the Institute of Technology, — his com- 
plete triumph over the early repulse and ridicule 
to which he referred in the last address of his 
life, — have been elsewhere sufficiently set forth, 
it happens to be in my power to throw some light 
on the unselfishness and generosity which marked 
his labors. 

An honored friend and connection, writing to 
me from Boston, speaks of Professor Rogers's ser- 
vices as President of the Institute of Technology, 
and as one of its leading instructors, as " exceed- 
ing description in fidelity, generosity, and skill." 
He is informed by a trustworthy authority that as 
the Institute, a large part of the time, had been 
limited in its resources. Professor Rogers had 
largely supplied the wants of its Laboratory and 
its other scientific departments from his own 
purse, and in all that time had refused for his 
own services any compensation. Kindling with 
enthusiasm he exclaims : " When you take into 
account the value of those services and the lim- 
ited means of the benefactor, is not this grand 
and glorious ! " 



28 



On the thirtieth day of May, 1882, a little 
more than a year ago, Professor Rogers, then in 
the seventy-eighth year of his age, — feeble, ema- 
ciated, wan, but his face illumined with the 
rewarding consciousness of duty nobly performed 
and of high effort crowned by merited success, — 
appeared for the last time on the platform of 
Huntington Hall in the institution which he had 
founded and nurtured. His presence was enthu- 
siastically welcomed by a large assembly, attracted 
by the ever interesting scene of the launching of 
youth into the stream of active and useful life, 
and by the great reputation of him who was to 
award the hardly won diploma to successful effort. 
He was presented to his audience by his succes- 
sor, President Francis A. Walker, in singularly 
graceful and touching words. 

He returned his thanks with more than usually 
deep feeling, and proceeded, with characteristic 
wisdom, to comment on the distinction which has 
often been made between theory and practice. 
" Formerly," he declared, " a wide separation ex- 
isted between theory and practice ; now, in every 
fabric that is made, in every structure that is 
reared, they are closely united into one interlock- 
ing system ; the practical is based upon the scien- 
tific, and the scientific is solidly built upon the 
practical. You have not been treated here to-day 
to anything in the nature of oratorical display, — 



■i 



29 

no decorations, no flowers, no music, — but you 
have seen in what careful and painstaking manner 
these young men and women have been prepared 
for their future occupations in Hfe." 

Continuing in this strain, and drawing from his 
full and inexhaustible mind one of his happy 
illustrations, he suddenly paused and — to the 
consternation of his audience — sank to the floor. 
Devoted friends and pupils rushed to his assist- 
ance, but he was speedily beyond the reach of 
human aid. To him those solemn words of the 
Preacher were now receiving their ever recurring 
and oft repeated application : " or ever the silver 
cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or 
the pitcher broken at the fountain, or the wheel 
broken at the cistern, — then shall the dust return 
to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return 
to God who gave it." 

Never in that hall and never in these halls 
were the accents of that tongue to be heard again ; 
and it may well be doubted if either there or here 
a voice shall ever again be listened to which can 
better inform the understanding with the princi- 
ples of science, and at the same time better warm 
the heart with the love of all generous learning, 
than the voice of William Barton Rogers. Let 
us reverently hope and believe that, with the clos- 
ing of that final day of earthly existence, those 
highly disciplined and splendid faculties — which 



30 

had so long and strenuously been exercised in 
scrutinizing the mysteries of the Universe, and in 
promoting the welfare of man — found a higher 
fruition than they had ever known before, in the 
beatific visions of a better world and in the in- 
effable joys of the Divine Presence. 



Note. — The "now silent poet," alluded to on page 25 of the preceding 
Address, is the Rev. Charles T. Brooks, of Newport, Rhode Island. He died at 
Newport on the 14th day of June, 1883, leaving a name which, as Scholar and 
Poet, will find an enduring place in the best literature of his country. 

His pure and gentle spirit seems to me to breathe with so much grace and 
feeling in the verses which he wrote a fortnight after the death of Professor 
Rogers, in commemoration of that event, that I have thought it well to reproduce 
them here. 

W. C. R. 



En JWemoriam. 

WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 

Brooklets and birds, in mingling tune, 
New life o'er all the landscape pour ; 
Again the balmy breath of June 
Invites to roam our tranquil shore. 

Old Ocean spreads a level floor, 
The heavens serenely bend above ; 
Nature's full choir intones once more 
The praise of all-embracing love. 

And yet a veil of sadness lies 
O'er all this lovely region spread ; 
A charm has vanished from our eyes ; 
From the sweet scene a grace has fled ! 

We feel that from our earthly day 
A beam of sunny light is gone — 
A kindling and a cheering ray 
Of friendship, from our life withdrawn. 



32 

But, blessed faith ! while earth is thus 
Poorer and lonelier than before, 
Heaven is still richer, and for us 
Has now one charm and promise more. 

O sainted friend ! farewell and hail ! 
Removed from sight, yet not afar ; 
Still through this earthly twilight-veil 
Thou beamest down, a friendly star ! 

The Prophet's blessing comes to thee ; 
The crown he holds to view is thine ; 
Forever more thy memory 
. In Heaven and in our hearts shall shine. - 

Poet and Orator wast thou 
Of Science ! Nature's glowing face 
Illumed thy eyes ; her radiant brow 
Lent thine a glory and a grace. 

The silvery music of thy speech, 
A crystal river flowed along ; 
What labored lore could never teach, 
Was breathed as from a lyric song. 

A cloud hath snatched thee from our sight ; 
Thy voice is hushed to mortal ears ; 
Thou listenest in the heavenly height 
The longed-for music of the spheres. 

C. T. B. 

Newport, June i6, 1882. 



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